A Yellow Stop Sign Find

I was cruising around Fort Wayne on Sunday taking pictures for Roadside Relic when this yellow stop sign caught my eye. If it wasn't for the embossed letters on the back of the sign, I would have totally missed it. So I did a U-turn on Coliseum Blvd. S. and pulled into the parking lot of the old International Harvester complex. The sign is rusty, bent up and needs some care, but it is a really cool relic. This "Stop - Thru Highway" sign at one time guarded traffic from the streetcars that ran down the middle of Coliseum (known back then by another street name). Hopefully, this sign will be around for many more years, and I am surprised that it has made it this long.

Learning to drive in Jersey, 1950

I bought a New Jersey Driver's Manual that appears to be from the 1950s (there's no date on it anywhere, but I can tell from the design). I purchased it online, which is sometimes a gamble since you can't flip through the book before you buy it, but I'm rarely disappointed.

This one has two pages of signs and some 1950s-style illustrations throughout. The drawings of the cars, gas station attendants, and even the top coat and hat of the male figures throughout reflect a simpler time.

It's fun for me to see how traffic control has changed since this manual was published. Case in point: "(The stop sign) is eight-sided, or octagonal, in shape and contains the word 'stop' in black letters on a yellow background." There's no mention of white letters on a red background, which means that this manual was published well before 1954, when the design changed from yellow to red.

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